Filipino Soldiers Defied UN Order to Surrender to ISIS

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

Good for them. Surrendering to people who practice beheading religiously is ill advised.

This whole mess is yet another of the innumerable reminders that international forces placed around Israel to absolutely nothing and surrender or run away at the first sign of trouble. That’s why the touted EU initiative to put international forces between Israel and Hamas is a stupid and destructive venture.

The Philippine military said Monday that a UN peacekeeping commander in the Golan Heights should be investigated for allegedly asking Filipino troops to surrender to Syrian rebels who had attacked and surrounded their camp

Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said he advised the 40 Filipino peacekeepers not to lay down their arms, and they defied the UN peacekeeping commander’s order. Instead, they staged a daring escape from the Golan camp over the weekend, ending a tense, dayslong standoff.

The disagreement is another blow to a UN peacekeeping mission that has been threatened by an escalation of violence in a buffer zone it has been guarding between Israel and Syria. A number of countries have withdrawn their troops from the peacekeeping force due to rising rebel attacks.

Forty-five Fijian peacekeepers who surrendered their firearms to the rebels last week are still being held by the al-Qaida-linked insurgents.

The commander of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, which supervises the peacekeeping mission in Golan, was overseeing talks with the Syrian rebels to secure the freedom of the Fijians. However, Catapang said he would not agree to any resolution of the hostage crisis that would put Filipino troops in grave danger.

When the besieged Filipino troops sought his advice after they were ordered to lay down their arms as part of an arrangement with the rebels to secure the Fijians’ release, Catapang said he asked them to defy the order.

“I told them not to follow the order because that is a violation of our regulation, that we do not surrender our firearms, and, at the same time, there is no assurance that you will be safe after you give your firearms,” Catapang said.

UNDOF did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

He’s quite right that negotiating with terrorists doesn’t work and terrorists should not be trusted. This is why Israel should not be expected to surrender in the hopes that the terrorists will keep up their end of the deal.